Exploring Sobriety

Exploring Sobriety

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Exploring Sobriety
Exploring Sobriety
What's the Point of Life? Happiness? Success? Or Something Else Entirely?

What's the Point of Life? Happiness? Success? Or Something Else Entirely?

And can sobriety help us get there?

Benya Clark's avatar
Benya Clark
Jul 08, 2025
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Exploring Sobriety
Exploring Sobriety
What's the Point of Life? Happiness? Success? Or Something Else Entirely?
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Milky Way Galaxy wallpaper
Photo by Graham Holtshausen on Unsplash

I just finished rereading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It was one of my favorite books in middle school, but it had been over two decades since I last read it. I went into the reread with somewhat low expectations. After all, how well could a book that I loved in middle school hold up after so many years? But, I was surprised and happy to discover the book was just as great as I remembered it being.

In case anyone hasn’t heard of it, the Hitchhiker’s Guide is a sci-fi comedy. It parodies a wide variety of science fiction, including, most directly, Asimov’s famous Foundation series.

[Spoilers ahead!]

One of the book’s main plot points centers around a computer designed to discover the answer to “life, the universe, and everything.” After seven and a half million years of working on the problem, the computer comes up with a simple, elegant, and completely nonsensical answer: 42.

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